After blowing the opportunity to clinch in front of the home fans, the Philadelphia Phillies (90-61) travelled across the country and brought their postponed party to SoCal as they out-dueled the Los Angeles Dodgers (84-66) to secure their second straight National League East championship.
Dodgers’ manager, Dave Roberts, tried to pull a fast one and switch the scheduled started from righty, Emmet Sheehan, to lefty opener, Anthony Banda, in an attempt to neutralize the first run-through of Kyle Schwarber
and Bryce Harper. Schwarber flushed that strategy by fighting off a one-out, 2-2 slider into the right field seats. It was Schwarber’s 53rd home run of the season and 22nd against a left-handed pitcher, tied for the major league record for lefty-on-lefty homers in a season with Matt Olson in 2021 and Stan Musial in 1949.
Ranger Suarez was sturdy but not unbreachable as the Dodgers’ lineup dinked and dunked him for three runs on a couple of sacrifice flys and home run by Max Muncy.
The originally scheduled starter, Sheehan, then came in and went 5.2 IP scoreless before conceding a ground rule double to Otto Kemp to lead off the seventh inning, who came home to score on a Bryson Stott single.
The next at bat, Weston Wilson had the biggest hit of his career with a two-run homerun off of Jack Dreyer.
Orion Kerkering looked dominant in the seventh, collecting all three outs via the strikeout, but made one mistake to Mookie Betts to again bring the game tied.
Lefty, Alex Vesia, took on Harper to begin the eighth and threw a 1-2 fastball up and inside that somehow Harper got all of for the go-ahead home run.
After a scoreless eighth by Matt Strahm, Jhoan Duran showed his humanity with a one-out solo home run to Andy Pages to send the game to extra innings.
In the top of tenth, Harrison Bader started on second, Schwarber lined out and Bryce Harper was intentionally walked. Bader and Harper took a double steal on the first pitch to JT Realmuto, who worked a full count and brought Bader home on a sacrifice fly.
David Robertson took on the bottom of the tenth, intentionally walked Freddie Freeman and and unintentionally walked Alex Call, but induced three field outs to end the game.
Cristopher Sanchez is slated to go up against Shohei Ohtani in the hangover game tomorrow.
